


It Was Just A Kiss

by ljunattainable



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Emotional Hurt, Emotional manipulation (past), First Kiss, Happy Ending, M/M, Naomi related, S8 spoilers, set randomly after S8
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-05
Updated: 2016-02-05
Packaged: 2018-05-18 10:24:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5924980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ljunattainable/pseuds/ljunattainable
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean finally gets up the courage to kiss Cas, but Cas reacts extremely badly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Was Just A Kiss

**Author's Note:**

  * For [museaway](https://archiveofourown.org/users/museaway/gifts).



> This fic was based on an idea a long, long time ago that I got from a line in one of museaway's stories. Thank you for the head canon, it finally turned into a fic.

Dean might end up regretting this, but fuck it, he’s going to do it anyway.

He’s definitely going to do it this time. 

He’s totally on board with this. 

He’s fully committed. 

Nothing ventured nothing gained. 

He glances sideways. Cas is concentrating hard on his book, brow furrowed and lips twitching as he follows some of the script of ancient language on the page with his pinky. Dean loves that look of intensity and focus that Cas gives everything, Dean included. Dean loves pretty much everything about Cas actually.

Yeah, he’s definitely going to do it.

Then again, maybe this isn’t a good idea after all. 

It’s kind of weird accepting you’re in love with your best friend after so many years. Maybe it’s too weird. Maybe it’s too late. What if he gets it wrong? What if Cas says no? What if it ruins their friendship? Dean doesn’t want that. Cas is often the only person he can talk to who isn’t Sam. He even tells Cas some things he can’t tell Sam. What if he loses that? He values their friendship above and beyond any other kind of ‘ship that they might or might not have in the future.

Yeah, he definitely shouldn’t do this.

Jesus, Dean, get a grip. He runs his tongue over his lips. They’re dry as drought-stricken desert so he does it again. He’s been having this back and forward argument with himself for months. Finally he’s talked himself into it and his subconscious is backing him out of it again.

“Cas,” he says, before he can change his mind yet again. His voice sounds a pitch higher than normal. He clears his throat. 

Cas looks up from volume 19 of Mystical Creatures, and looks at Dean, waiting for him to go on. They’re almost touching, side-by-side at the library table. Dean sat here intentionally so that he didn’t have to get up and move across to Cas when he finally plucked up the courage. That would have been really fucking awkward. 

Yeah, like this isn’t. Dean swallows.

Cas frowns and turns to face him fully, shifting in his chair so his knees knock against Dean’s. Dean closes his eyes. It’s just a slow-motion blink really. It’s now or never. “Are you alright, Dean?”

That’s when Dean lunges forward and plants one on Cas in the most uncoordinated, awkward kiss Dean’s ever delivered in his life. 

But he only gets to touch Cas’s mouth briefly with his own before Cas leans back in a rush, and scrambles to his feet, leaving Dean puckered up in empty space. Cas backs away from Dean looking horrified… no, not horrified, he looks fricking terrified.

“Sorry.” Dean knocks over his chair in his haste to get to his feet. “That was meant to be better. Nicer. It was meant to come with words. Explanation,” he stutters. Oh, yeah, smooth Dean.

Cas backs further away until he stumbles down the top-most step only just catching his footing. Dean reaches an arm out without thinking to steady him. He’s much too far away when Cas takes another step backwards. Dean steps forwards his hands held up, palms facing out in a gesture meant to calm Cas. He has no idea what happened, but he wants Cas to calm the fuck down.

“Sorry, I won’t do it again, I promise I won’t do it again, not if you don’t want me to. I just wanted to be with you, Cas.” he says desperately. He scrambles for words he knows Cas will understand. “Date you,” he says, though he’s not sure there would have been an actual date involved in the traditional sense, though if that’s what Cas wanted, Dean could have done that. All that’s off the table now though. Dean steps forward, Cas steps back. “Okay, man, look – just forget it. Please, just forget it,” Dean says. This could not have possibly gone worse.

Except apparently it still has some way to go because when Cas reaches the bottom step, he turns tail and runs. 

Taken completely by surprise, Dean stands there like an idiot for way too long. By the time he recovers and starts to follow, the bunker door is already slamming above him. 

“Cas!” Dean legs it up the staircase.

Sam’s disembodied voice floats up from below. “Dean? What’s going on?”

Dean ignores him. 

He flings the bunker door open just in time to watch the glow of Cas’s taillights disappear around the nearest bend. Crap. He runs a hand through his hair and tugs on the short strands until it hurts. For a moment he stands there like an idiot waiting for he-knows-not-what. When he hears Sam’s heavy footsteps hurrying up the stairs he turns and heads inside. He could do without his brother asking questions he won’t or can’t answer right now.

~~~~~

“So you and Cas had an argument,” Sam probes over the remains of their breakfast with absolutely no attempt at subtlety whatsoever. He hands Dean his coffee and Dean takes it without thanks.

“Sort of,” Dean mumbles. Cas is not answering his apologetic calls or his apologetic texts, even when he adds an emoticon. Dean is not in a good mood. “I don’t want to talk about it Sam.” 

“Okay,” Sam says, but he keeps watching Dean anyway. Maybe he thinks Dean will cave under the caring, brotherly gaze. 

Dean scowls at him. “If you have something to say about some topic other than that, then just say it.” Dean picks up his coffee cup and takes a sip. Thick and black with three sugars, just the way he likes it. Sam’s trying to butter him up.

Sam sips at his own coffee, then blows on the surface. 

He’s going to talk about Dean’s argument with Cas again, Dean knows by the way he’s stalling.

“It’s just that Cas must have been pretty upset to dash out of here like that.”

Dean puts his mug down too heavily on the table. Sweet, sticky coffee splashes out. “Goddamnit.” He moves his mug out of the puddle but makes no move to clean it up. Sam made him do it, Sam can clean it up. “Do you want me to admit it was my fault? Because it was my fault, okay? I admit it. Now can we stop talking about it?”

“I’m just worried,” Sam says, his irritation clear as day in his short, sharp movements as he grabs a cloth and wipes it over the table. “He’s my friend too. I tried to call him but he didn’t answer and -”

“Yeah, well, join the club,” Dean interrupts. Which part of he doesn’t want to talk about this did Sam not understand? He stands up and picks up his coffee cup. “Look, he’s fine. He’ll be fine. He’ll come home when he’s ready.” Dean hopes that’s true. No, he knows that’s true. Cas always comes home when they’ve both reached the point where they can safely ignore and not talk about whatever it is they’ve done to each other most recently. Let’s face it, Dean trying to kiss Cas is not the worst thing that either of them have ever done to the other. Dean moves himself and his coffee to somewhere Sam isn’t and he sits and does his own brand of worrying. 

All Dean did was kiss Cas. Okay, it was a bad kiss, a terrible kiss in fact, but Dean doesn’t think it warranted such an immediate and extreme reaction. So if it wasn’t how awful Dean’s kiss was, then what made Cas so scared? Cas has been kissed before and by all accounts he liked it so it was nothing to do with destroying his virtue or purity. It wasn’t because Dean’s a guy because Cas doesn’t give a fuck about gender or sexual orientation. Even if Cas had an issue with the fact it was Dean himself doing the kissing, he could have just said no.

The more Dean thinks about Cas’s reaction the more unsure he is as to why it was such a big deal. Dean is not trying to get out of taking responsibility here but surprise, maybe he’d expect. Shock, possibly. Confusion, almost certainly. What he got was fear and that he can’t explain. There’s more to this than meets the eye but he can hardly work out what it is if Cas keeps ignoring his attempts to get in touch. Dean takes his phone out and thumbs at it to unlock it. No missed calls, no missed messages but he didn’t expect any different. 

He dials Cas’s number and when he gets voicemail as he expected to he leaves a brief message for Cas to check in. No apologies this time, he just wants to know Cas is okay. He follows it up with a text, then puts the phone on the table and hopes he gets a response.

~~~~~

Dean spends the rest of the day moping. He checks his phone every now and then, and tries to read a novel by some Vonnegut wannabe that he picked up in the second hand book shop. The owner of the shop had recommended it but Dean can’t get into it. It seems unfair to blame that on the book though in all honesty. 

Around about the time Dean’s stomach starts telling him it’s nearly time to eat dinner, Sam, who’s been MIA after Dean blew him off, appears. Not surprisingly he still looks pissed with Dean. Let him, it doesn’t change anything. 

Dean is actually genuinely sorry he can’t talk to Sam about what happened, but he just can’t. He would definitely have told Sam that he kissed Cas if it had all worked out a hell of a lot better than it did, but because it failed epically, Dean absolutely, without a doubt, doesn’t want Sam to know anything.

Sam’s hand goes up to smooth back his hair. “Cas called,” Sam says.

Oh, thank God. 

“Yeah?” Dean says. He turns the corner on his page and puts the book down, sliding his palms over his jeans, trying to make it look casual. “He okay? What did he say?” 

Sam shrugs. “He’s working a case. He wanted some help.” 

“And he couldn’t have called me for that? It’s not like I haven’t been telling him to call me,” he snaps. 

Sam sits down in the chair opposite Dean and leans back into the cushions. 

“Yeah, well, it would seem then that whatever happened with you two, he’s still pissed,” Sam says. He focuses intently on Dean and waits, one eyebrow raised.

Dean knows he’s supposed to break down and fill this silence with an explanation. Fuck that. “This case? What is it?”

Sam drops the eyebrow and sighs. He gives Dean a disappointed glare. 

“Simple salt and burn. He’s already done the grave but apparently it didn’t work. He needed to know where there might be other belongings tying the ghost to Earth. He should be done by tomorrow I would think. Maybe even tonight.”

“Why is Cas handling a ghost? Shouldn’t we be handling a ghost? And shouldn’t he be here? Or doing something more important? Or here.” Dean trails off. It’s not that Cas has never handled a ghost, just that it’s not usually his sort of thing, those run-of-the-mill cases.

Sam’s is-my-brother-really-this-stupid gaze lingers longer than Dean’s comfortable with. 

“Shall we take it that he’s hunting ghosts to avoid you, Dean?” Sam says eventually.

Yeah, he guesses you could take it that way.

“When he’s done,” Dean says, “Tell him to come home.”

“Shall I tell him you’re sorry?” Sam asks.

Sam’s trying to be funny. Sarcastic-funny, not funny-funny. Dean’s so not in the mood. He stands up. “If that’s what it takes,” he says. “I’m going to make something to eat. We’ve got hot dogs or hot dogs.”

Sam gives him a sad look. Dean’s not sure if it’s Cas-related or food-related. “I’ll take the hot dogs.”

~~~~~

Cas doesn’t come home after the ghost hunt and he doesn’t come home when two days later he dispatches a siren. The only news that Sam’s had has been confirmation on the kills, and that’s been by text. Dean hasn’t heard a dicky-bird though he calls and texts at least once a day.

Dean and Sam do their own hunt, a two-day trip out to see off a werewolf. It’s young and inexperienced and not really distracting enough but at least it gets them out of the bunker so that Dean doesn’t wear out the carpets with his pacing. Dean texts Cas where they’re going, and when they get there, he texts him where they are. Even though the idea grates, he makes Sam do the same in case Cas has blocked his number. 

When they’re on their way back, the impala rumbling down familiar highway, five days after Cas left the bunker, Sam finally gets another phone call. 

“Cas,” Sam says, glancing across at Dean. Dean nearly swerves the car off the road. “How are you? Are you okay?” Dean hears a mumble from the other end of the phone and Sam mouths, “He’s fine.” At least Cas is asking after him. That’s something. More mumbling. Dean turns the music down in the hope that he can make out the conversation. “We’re in the car.” More mumbling. “Yeah, he’s here. Do you want to talk to him?” Dean holds his hand out for the phone, and withdraws it self-consciously when Sam shakes his head. Seriously? Five days of shunning over a kiss? 

There’s more mumbling from Cas on the other end of the phone, but it’s quieter and Dean can’t make out a word. Cas must have dropped his voice deliberately when he found out Dean was with Sam. It makes Dean feel even worse but maybe it’s supposed to. 

“Naomi?” Sam checks. “I thought she was dead.” More mumbling.

“Put him on speaker,” Dean grumbles.

Sam shakes his head and covers the mouthpiece. “He asked me not to.”

“I don’t frigging care what he asked you to do, put him on speaker.”

Sam shakes his head again. He glares disapprovingly at Dean who goes back to staring angrily out of the windshield while listening to only half a conversation, and the boring half at that.

“What kind of tricks? … But if you don’t’ remember them all … Yeah, okay, I understand but I think you’re wrong.” Sam glances sideways at Dean and looks away quickly when Dean turns to look at him. They’re talking about him. They must be. “No, I’ll do it,” Sam continues. “But I do think you’re wrong… yeah, I’ll call you later.” Sam ends the call and leans back in his seat, closing his eyes, but he’s not relaxing. His eyebrows are drawn together and concerned furrows cast shadows on his forehead. Dean’s gaze flicks between Sam and the road, back and forth. If Sam’s worried, Dean’s worried.

“Well?” Dean asks. “What did he want?”

Sam opens his eyes and lifts his head. “He’s got another case. An angel thing. Something to do with Naomi.” Sam frowns at some inner thought and Dean glances at him then back to the road. Angel things never work out well.

“Is he safe? Is he going to be safe on this?” he asks.

“I hope so.” Sam’s stare is boring a hole into the side of Dean’s head. “Do you know anything about what Naomi did to him?”

“No, well, a little. I know what you know, probably. He’s not exactly been chatty. I know Naomi had him under some mind control thing and that she messed with his head and his memories. I know he did some things he isn’t happy about and doesn’t want to talk about.” Dean pauses but Sam doesn’t add anything. “So what’s this thing he’s doing now and what’s it got to do with Naomi?” Dean asks. “Did he tell you anything?” He’s been selfishly worrying about a little attempted kiss and Cas is dealing with frigging angels and brainwashing again. “Naomi and her cronies are dead. They are dead, right?”

“Oh, they’re dead, Cas is pretty sure. And he didn’t really tell me anything specific about what happened, just wanted me to check something out for him. He’s just…,” Sam pauses, and looks out the passenger window, then back at Dean. “The row you guys had stirred some memories up, he said. It’s taken him a few days to get his head around it but he thinks Naomi might have left something behind to purposefully torment him. I think he’s wrong, but I have to check.”

“I’m going to guess I’m not allowed to help … and why the fuck do you keep staring at me like that?” Dean says as Sam once again goes silent while he stares intently at Dean as if he’s trying to drill a hole with his laser eyes into his frigging head. “Dude?”

Sam turns his head away. “Sorry. It’s nothing.”

Jesus.

~~~~~

“Cas, pick up you son of a bitch.” Dean sits on the side of his bed and stares at the floor, elbow on his knee, face in his palm. “Look, I don’t know what you want me to say. I will keep saying I’m sorry if you want me to because I am truly, truly sorry, but it was just a kiss, and a crap one at that. I won’t do it again. Call me. Or better yet, come home. I don’t want you messing with angel stuff, not on your own.” Dean’s voice cracks and he clears his throat. There’s the empty air of the ever-patient recording device in his ear, waiting, but he can’t think of anything else to say when it comes down to it. Nothing he hasn’t said before. “Just… I’m worried about you and about me making a balls up of our friendship.” He lifts his head to stare at the ceiling and pleads into the phone, “Please, Cas, come home.” 

He hangs up and throws the phone across the room where it bounces off the wall and skitters across the floor. Damn stubborn angel. 

Standing with exhaustion that’s more in his head than in his body, Dean heads to the door. He scoops up his poor, abused phone on the way past, slipping it into his pocket with a cursory glance. Now he’s going to need a new phone. Great. 

Sam’s helping Cas out with something that no doubt involves reading a lot of lore books about angels and Dean’s not allowed to help, not that he’d have been great at that anyway but that’s not the point. He’s restless, and he’s worried. Not a good combination. He figures he’ll grab a coffee and do a bit of trawling of the local sensationalist websites to see if anything’s cooking that’s not too far from the bunker, preferably something he can do on his own so that Cas still has backup in Sam, even if he won’t accept Dean’s help.

Sam’s already got coffee brewed and sitting on the counter and Dean pours himself a cup, adding three spoons of sugar from the bowl on the counter, all on autopilot. The coffee’s hot and he blows over the surface. He should probably start with the Kansas UFO site. Even if he can’t find a case it’s always good for a laugh. He takes his first sip of coffee and spits it out straight away. The coffee ends up sprayed all over the tiled floor in front of him. It’s salty, for fuck’s sake. It’s thick with it, gross and horrible. Dean thinks he’s going to throw up. He spits into the sink and rinses his mouth out. He dips a fingertip into the sugar bowl and licks with just the tip of his tongue.

“Hey! Hey!” Dean yells, exiting the kitchen, mug in hand, heading for the library where he assumes Sam is. “You put salt in the sugar bowl you frigging idiot.”

Dean smacks his tongue on the inside of his mouth to try and get rid of the foul taste that no amount of rinsing is going to clear.

“Sorry,” Sam says, not looking particularly sorry as Dean marches purposefully up to him. Sam stops what he’s doing and peers carefully at Dean as Dean glowers at him. 

“We don’t even keep the salt near the sugar, dude, what the hell?”

“I’ll make you another.” Sam goes to take Dean’s cup but Dean snatches it away.

“Don’t bother,” he grumbles, turning on his heel and heading out the same way he came in. “I’ll make it myself.”

~~~~~

“What the hell are these?” Dean glares at his fork.

“New cutlery?” Sam raises an eyebrow and looks at Dean as if he’s being deliberately obtuse. There’s an edge to Sam this morning that Dean hopes isn’t just because they got new knives and forks, because that’d be damn sad.

“Why?” 

Sam shrugs. Useful.

“Cas call again?” Dean grunts. He’s in a foul mood. His search of local events and weird happenings turned up nothing he could kill, not even aliens. He looks at the food on his plate. Bacon and eggs. At least something’s good with his day.

“Yep,” Sam says. “He’s okay, he’s fine,” he adds as if Dean would care. Dean’s gone past the caring stage. If Cas wants to be a dick about this then that’s Cas’s business and Dean’s done with it. Cas will come around when he wants to come around. Dean hasn’t sent any more texts or made any more calls. Cas is a big boy, he knows what’s going down, and Dean hasn’t got anything left to say.

“Good,” he says, because okay, maybe he does care just a little, and he picks up the new fork to pierce his egg yolks so they ooze over his bacon just the way he likes it. 

“Holy fuck, where the hell did you get this fork?” The fork weighs a ton. “And why did you get this fork?” Dean stares at the fork. “Is this iron? What the hell do you want an iron fork for? And isn’t it bad for you to eat with iron?” He doesn’t know, he can’t keep up with all these health things Sam knows about.

“Yeah, you know,” Sam says, turning and trying to open the cutlery drawer with such force he wedges it in its space at the wrong angle. Dean stares at him as he finally wrestles it free and fumbles one of their usual forks out of the drawer. “You’re right. I don’t know what I was thinking. Here.”

Dean takes the fork, pierces his eggs and slowly starts eating, staring at Sam, who is going a bit blotchy like he does when he’s embarrassed. And so he should be. Dean hopes he didn’t spend good money on that frigging white elephant of an iron fork.

~~~~~

Something’s going on. Dean’s got that far. He thinks it was when he reached into the back of his sock drawer, where for some reason all his socks had accumulated, and nicked himself on a silver blade that had no reason for being there, that the penny dropped.

“What you think I’m a shifter?” he challenges Sam when he finds him hovering outside his bedroom. Dean sucks the pad of his thumb where it’s bleeding out. “Or a demon? That salt wasn’t an accident was it?” He pushes himself into Sam’s space but Sam holds his ground. “Was there holy water in that coffee too? And the iron fork?” 

“It was Cas,” Sam says. He looks contrite, yet stubborn. Dean would be impressed he could pull that off if he wasn’t so mad. “I was pretty sure you were you, but he wanted me to check.”

“Cas thinks I’m not me?”

Sam nods. “He said you were behaving,” and I’m quoting here, “’in a manner that leads him to suspect you may have been replaced with someone pretending to be you, but who is not you’. Specifically, he thinks Naomi left a plant.”

“Huh,” Dean says, which is about all he can muster, because what the hell? It was just a frigging kiss for God’s sake. Dean’s never kissing anyone again. Ever. Way too complicated. “And that’s what you were checking out for him? you believed him?”

Sam shakes his head. He’s backed in to the wall so he’s not going anywhere. Dean hasn’t decided what to do with him yet. “Well, no, I didn’t believe him. To be honest I just thought you were acting like the same jerk that you always act like,” Sam says.

“Thanks for that. I think,” Dean growls.

“But then you didn’t try and kiss me.”

Dean chokes when he swallows his tongue.

~~~~~

Cas comes home the following afternoon after Dean forced Sam to make an immediate phone call to him to confirm Dean’s identity. (“It can wait until after breakfast”, “No it can’t”, “Dean…”) 

Dean’s emotions are a jumble. He’s kind of pissed, and kind of relieved, and kind of worried, and kind of frustrated. He’s also glad Cas is home, really glad, though it might not look that way on the surface. Sam of course did a runner as soon as he’d got ‘welcome home’ out of the way, so now Dean and Cas, left to their own devices, are circling around each other like dogs checking out how much of a potential threat the other is. Dean is nervous, Cas is nervous. This is going awesome.

But they really are going to have to talk about this. Dean sighs. Believe it or not, he’s the better of the two of them at this sort of thing. And that in itself is probably half their problems right there.

“I’m glad you’re back,” Dean says. He means it, it sounds sincere but Cas looks at him as if he barely dares to believe it. Dean gestures to a seat opposite him at the table and takes a seat for himself. After a moment, Cas pulls out his chair and sits down, wrapping his coat around him even though it’s not cold and Cas wouldn’t care if it was. “We should talk.”

Cas looks down at the table and then back up at Dean. “I’m sorry.” So many of their conversations start this way.

Dean leans forward. “Dude, you’ve got nothing to be sorry for.” He locks eyes with Cas to hold his attention. “I’m the dick that kissed you out of the blue. I should have checked that you were okay with it first.”

Cas shakes his head. “I reacted extremely and inappropriately, I didn’t answer your calls, I had Sam test you in case you weren’t you. Dean,” Cas says earnestly, “I thought you weren’t you. How could I not have known that obviously you were you?”

“Well when you put it like that,” Dean says. He smiles involuntarily at the absurdity of it.

Cas hesitates. “Are you amused?”

Dean huffs a small laugh. “A little. Not really, I mean it’s not really funny, but it is kind of ridiculous. But don’t worry,” he assures Cas, “I won’t try and kiss you again.”

Cas brings his elbows up to the table, laces his fingers together and stares at them. “What if I want you to.”

Dean’s head snaps back and he nearly falls backwards off his chair. “What?”

“I want you to kiss me.” This would undoubtedly be better if Cas wasn’t saying it like he was asking Dean to punch him in the mouth.

Dean pushes his chair back from the table. “Nope, that’s not going to happen.”

It’s Cas’s turn to lean forward on the table now. Dean watches him. “When Naomi had me…” Cas flaps a hand seeming unhappy to finish the sentence.

“Brainwashed?” Dean supplies.

Cas looks at his hands again briefly then back up at Dean again. “Yes.”

Cas is clearly distressed. “Cas, you don’t have to tell me,” Dean says, meaning it. It’s not that he isn’t curious as to what went down over the past week but they’ll get by without Cas having to tell Dean something that he clearly doesn’t want to tell him.

“I do have to.” Cas looks around the room, anywhere but Dean. He eventually focuses back on his hands which are now gripping each other so hard his knuckles have turned white. “She made copies of you, hundreds of copies. She made me kill them, every last one of them.”

Dean stares at the top of Cas’s head, the slight tremor in his shoulders. “Cas – ” Dean starts, distraught at Cas’s own distress, but Cas interrupts.

“I knew they were copies. They’d do something or say something that I knew you wouldn’t do or say in real life. The tiniest little things sometimes. It’s why I could kill them, because I knew they weren’t really you.”

“The crypt…” Dean says, thinking back to that awful day when Cas had been so cold and brutal, until suddenly he hadn’t.

Cas nods. He looks up finally at Dean. “Some of them would kiss me. That’s how I knew they weren’t you. So when you kissed me – ”

Fuck Naomi. “That bitch!” Fuck her for ruining things for them, for Cas, even now.

“Indeed,” Cas says. “So you see, Dean, it really wasn’t your fault.” Cas pauses, flicks his eyes to the side, then back to Dean, then clears his throat. “But the fact is that those copies were mostly extrapolated from my memories of you and they wouldn’t even have tried to kiss me if somewhere in my subconscious I didn’t want them to.”

Dean stares at Cas. Does he mean it? Cas is looking back, expression schooled into something near-blank, and he’s sitting back from the table a little. If Dean wanted an out now after what Cas has told him, Cas would give it to him. 

Dean looks into Cas’s eyes. He doesn’t think Cas is doing this because he feels he has to and the fact is that Dean still wants this, even after this hellish week. But he’s scared. Scared he’ll get it wrong. Scared that he won’t be able to erase all of Cas’s bad memories of the kisses those copies gave him and replace it with a good one. That’s a lot of responsibility for anyone going into their first, well technically their second, kiss.

Cas lets out a long quiet, shaky breath that Dean notices although he’s not sure he was supposed to. “We don’t have to if you don’t want to, Dean. It’s fine. I just thought, if you still wanted to, then you should know that I’d like to.”

“I want to.” Dean says. He watches Cas carefully. Cas relaxes a fraction barely noticeable except that he stops wringing his hands as if he’s trying to crush the bones to powder. Dean stands up. “I’m going to come over there.” He points to the chair next to Cas. A bead of sweat dribbles down his spine. This is stupid. He wasn’t even this nervous the first time he tried this.

He walks around the table and sits down next to Cas. He licks his lips. Cas mirrors him. 

“I’m going to kiss you now.”

“Okay.”

Okay.

Dean leans in. He leaves his eyes open because if Cas makes a run for it he wants to know sooner rather than later. His lips barely touch Cas’s. Cas doesn’t react at all and Dean nearly pulls back in panic, away from the soft feel of Cas’s mouth, but then Cas leans forward to meet him, pressing their mouths harder together, fist in Dean’s shirt to pull him back in. 

The kiss is clumsy, hungry, and full of the desperation brought on not only by the past week but the past year, and maybe the years before it. But best of all, when they finally pull apart to breathe, Cas is still here.

**Author's Note:**

> I am trying some new writing and editing processes. They mostly involve not re- and re-reading fics multiple times and editing the life and soul out of them. If you find mistakes, please tell me.


End file.
